Burma, Assam, Palestine echoes in Kashmir on Jumat-ul-Vida

SRINAGAR: Kashmir has been observing Jumat-ul-Vida, the last Friday of Islam's Prophet, as Youm-ul-Qudus, a day to remember the al-Aqsa mosque, ever since the practice was started by Imam Khomeini in Iran. This year it had many additions from Myanmar to Assam.

Weeks after social media focused on the anti-Muslim rioting in Rohingya province, a gathering of Dukhteran-e-Milat activists today came out in a protest against Myanmar government. Carrying placards with some of the goriest pictures of the pogrom, the women asked Burma to stop the massacres and suggested Muslim world to intervene at the earliest.

Images about Burma massacre had gone viral when the Dalai Lama was visiting Kashmir after many decades. Though he had a few engagements in public, his hosts ensured the visit remains low-key and limited so that nobody brings in Myanmar. The strategy worked. It was only after he flew to Leh for his yearly fortnight long retreat that adverse commentary on his visit and ignoring Burma surfaced.

Though every country including Bangladesh, the next door neighbor, skipped making an issue out of Burmese rioting, it was the social media's second major success after Arab Spring that people started taking note of happenings. Nearly a month after the campaign on facebook and YouTube, Turkish officials visited Myanmar. Saudi Arabia has contributed for relief and rehabilitation of the victims of violence.

As people were busy in Friday prayers, a major procession appeared in up-town. They were youth from Shia community shouting slogans against Israel. Their leaders made long speeches in a congested locality and disbursed peacefully. A huge gathering was reported from Kargil as well.

But the major gathering of the day was in the historic Jamia Masjid where more than one lakh people offered Friday prayers. After his speech was over, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq read out a resolution calling for ending the occupation of Palestine. It also asked India and Pakistan to resolve Kashmir. It also expressed solidarity with the victims of Assam communal violence. After the Friday congregation was over, there were angry protests over Burma and Assam. Factions of angry youth actually engaged cops and paramilitary men into clashes that continued for few hours, disrupting traffic and shoppers who were out in thousands today.

Police had detained Syed Ali Geelani and his deputy Ashraf Shraie to prevent them from speaking to any congregation in Kashmir. Habir Ahmad Shah was kept under house arrest. JKLF leader Yasin Malik , however, was seen speaking to a huge gathering in the lawns of Charar-e-Sharif, a central Kashmir town that is home to the tomb of Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani.

Jumat-ul-Vida marks the beginning of Eid festivities and the markets that usually undergo a sort of slowdown in the month of fating witness an upswing. The surge for cash was so huge that HDFC Bank and J&K Bank cancelled the otherwise notified holidays to serve its clientele. Markets exploded in Kashmir on Friday and it will be the same rush dominating the scene till the Eid crescent is seen.